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Strike may inconvenience thousands
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 21, 2006
NEW YORK - The city's doormen threatened to go on strike Friday in a walkout that could force tens of thousands of apartment dwellers to take their trash out to the curb, carry their own groceries and hail their own cabs.
The building owners and the doormen's union remained far apart on the major issues, including wages, pensions and health care, with the contract set to expire at 12:01 a.m.
"Talks are continuing, but the two sides remain far apart," union spokesman Matt Nerzig said Thursday evening.
The union represents 28,000 doormen, porters, elevator operators and superintendents in 3,000 apartment buildings, mostly in Manhattan.
"The rents they're getting today and they can't help us?" asked doorman Arthur "Butch" Souffront, who works at an Upper West Side building where a one-bedroom apartment can rent for about $3,500 a month. Souffront, 40, said he has to moonlight as a locksmith to support his wife and two girls.
Building owners girded for a strike by hiring security guards and issuing identification tags to tenants. Some tenants agreed to work garbage, mail and cleaning duty.
"They sent us a letter saying that we have to deal with our recycling and something about the trash," said Bandar al-Turkmani, 22, a graduate student at Columbia University. "That stinks - literally."
The last doorman strike in New York City was in 1991, when the union walked off the job for 12 days.
FreshDirect, an Internet home-delivery grocer, said there was a big run on pizza, bottled water and ground beef over the past few days.
[Last modified April 21, 2006, 01:43:05]
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